Chapter Thirty
They reached Streatham at around seven o’clock — five miles from London — the road already clogged by carts, herds of cattle for Smithfield, and carriages heading into the city across Westminster Bridge. It was a relief to finally take the turn for Mitcham; a shorter route, the Duke assured her, to Barnes and the Comte d’Antraigues’s country residence.
‘I have only been there once, for a rout, so my memory of it is sketchy,’ the Duke warned as he whipped up the pace from the new team that had been changed at Croydon. ‘As far as I recall, the house is upon the riverbank.’
She heard the croak of fatigue in his voice. He had managed almost six and a half hours of driving with only brief respites at the tollgates and posting houses. She felt it in her bones too, alongside the ever-building dread of what they were hurtling towards. The keeper of the Croydon tollgate had reported that just twenty minutes earlier Lord Carlston had passed through — looking like death himself, the man had said cheerfully — and still driving at relentless speed. She squinted along the road, eyes scratchy with grit, hoping to see a plume of dust that would indicate his lordship’s curricle. But twenty minutes translated into at least three miles between them, and the view was obscured by bends in the road and dense copses of trees.
She had no clear idea of what lay ahead, and it did not make for a solid plan. Even so, whatever eventuated in that house, retrieving the journal must be her priority. It could not fall into the hands of the Comte, a Deceiver.
Even as she thought it, as she pressed her hands against her thighs to lock the duty into her bone and muscle, her mind conjured an overwhelming sense of lips upon her own, the smell of soap and leather and warm skin. She drew a shaking breath and glanced at the Duke as if he might have seen and felt the overwhelming image too, but his attention was fixed upon the road. It seemed a deeper part of her had another priority: Carlston. Save him, but from what? The Deceivers? Pike and Stokes? Himself?
She shook her head, coming to an unsettling conclusion. Any plan she made would be little more than useless. Every decision must be made in the moment; a daunting prospect.
A milestone flashed by: Barnes, two miles.
Ten minutes later they rounded a corner that brought them alongside the morning-grey expanse of the Thames. The riverbank was thick with clumps of long reeds, and a majestic willow bent over the slow-moving water. A curricle stood abandoned beneath the tree’s trailing branches, the horses still harnessed and their dark coats lathered.
‘That is Carlston’s gig!’ the Duke yelled above the grind of their velocity. ‘I recognise those bays.’
Helen felt her heart lift. He was not so lost within his madness to push his prized horses beyond their endurance.
‘He and Quinn must be on foot,’ she said, searching the grassy riverside. ‘We are close, surely.’
The Duke pointed with his whip at a two-storey white building with a thatched roof. ‘There, that public house: the Sun. I am sure it is where we must turn for the Comte’s residence.’ His whip point shifted towards the riverbank. ‘It is that red-brick house.’
They slowed as they drew up to the Sun Inn, then made the left turn and doubled back a little to enter Barnes Terrace. Helen leaned forward in her seat, searching for Carlston and Quinn as they drove alongside the river, which was already busy with long low boats piled high with goods. They clattered past a large malthouse, and an even larger estate with the name ‘Elm Bank’ emblazoned upon the iron gates. The Thames curved ahead, its wide expanse a greenish grey in the weak morning sun.
She could see no sign of two men on foot, but a coach and four stood outside Number 27 — the Comte’s residence — with one door open, a woman half bent inside arranging something within the cabin. The Duke slowed their pace to a trot, the drum and grind of their arrival pulling the woman up from her task — a maid by her drab gown and neat white cap. She watched them pass, then ducked back into the coach.
‘Do not come inside, Selburn,’ Helen said, gripping his arm for a moment as he drew the curricle up outside the White Hart Inn that marked the end of the Terrace. Through the windows, she saw customers already inside its public room. Early drinkers. ‘This will be a fight between Deceivers and Reclaimers. You will not be able to help.’
‘You expect me to sit here while you go in there alone?’
‘That is what the future would hold.’ Now he would understand what his proposal meant. ‘You must promise not to come in. I cannot be distracted from what is ahead.’
He gave a terse nod, but she was not convinced.
‘Give me your word.’
‘You have it,’ he said roughly.
Helen swung herself down to the cobbles, smoothed down the buttoned front of her buckskins and started back the short distance to Number 27.
The Comte’s residence was a handsome double-fronted dwelling built in dark red brick on five levels. The household appeared to be in the midst of an imminent departure: the coachman up on his box, and the front door of the house standing open. Another maid stood in the doorway, her attention on a figure behind in the hallway. Helen saw a flash of royal blue silk trimmed with broad thread lace and an extravagantly plumed red bonnet: the Comtesse, no doubt.
Helen crossed the road, a little at a loss. She was not sure what she had expected, but it was not this orderly house. Had she somehow arrived before Carlston? She skirted the coach, receiving a dull stare from the plump coachman, and regarded the wide-open door.
‘Can I help you, sir?’ the maid in drab asked, looking curiously at the dishevelled, hatless young man so intent upon the house.
Helen focused her hearing inside the dwelling. Beyond the two women at the door, she heard the creak of steps, the hard rhythm of laboured breathing. Then the Comte’s voice: ‘Guillaume, what are you doing here? You look awful, my friend.’
‘I have your pages, Louis. What is the cure?’ Carlston’s voice, strained into a rasp.
He must have entered from the back. Three strides and Helen was upon the doorstep, pushing past the maid and dodging the Comtesse’s ample figure.